Thus Der Spiegel today. “Every year, some thirty-thousand people attempt to climb Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, and a shocking number die on the mountain,” elaborates the newspaper. “The reason, say locals, is overcrowding, foolhardiness, and a lack of respect for the White Lady.” At four-thousand eight-hundred and ten meters, the challenge is real enough. It is one of the most climbed mountains in the world. So far this year, twenty climbers have lost their lives on the Mont Blanc massif. Between 1990 and 2011, seventy-four people died on the most dangerous segment of the climb, and some one-hundred and eighty got injured. In peak season, mountain rescue teams head out twenty to thirty times a day. The mayor of the municipality that encompasses the segment is annoyed by all this. “Nobody wants people to die of stupidity in one’s own yard,” he is quoted. Indeed. But is it stupidity? Or is it a form of premeditated suicide? The article does not even touch this possibility, but it is worth considering a bit more seriously. For suicide of this ilk is likely to grow in popularity in the years to come. It offers yet another glimpse at collective human intelligence, for it is clear to a growing number of humans that the future is becoming a joke. Whence the deepest if defiant respect for the White Lady, too.